volcanoes of the Pacific belt of fire in South and Central
America, Alaska, Japan, the Philippines, the East Indies, and
New Zealand. It is in this volcanic circle that earthquakes
seem to occur most frequently.
Rainier's last eruption took place about 550 years ago, ac
cording to radiocarbon dating of tree trunks in the ash lay
ers. Clouds of steam from the summit were last recorded in
1894. But Lute Jerstad, a fellow member of the Everest
Expedition, tells us that as recently as 1961 he saw where a
steam spout on the side of the mountain had hurled debris
more than half a mile along a glacier.
Occasionally avalanches started by violent explosions of
steam or by snow melting high on the mountain trigger large
slides of glacial debris or volcanic rock. This debris becomes
a mudflow.
Such avalanches have been known to cover 60 square
miles with a sea of mud. The most recent mudflow, in 1947,
carried glacial rubble for miles down Kautz Creek, tearing
out the stream bed, washing out bridges, and uprooting or
suffocating all the trees in its path.
Climbers Attempt New Route up Peak
In mid-August I took part as an instructor in a five-day
mountaineering seminar (page 708) run by Dick McGowan,
proprietor of a Seattle mountaineering store in winter and
chief mountain guide at Rainier in summer.
Lila registered as a student to improve her snow and ice
techniques for her own venture into the Himalayas in the
spring of 1963. While the Everest Expedition goes about its
work, Lila will be making a 500-mile trek from Katmandu
in Nepal to Darjeeling in India, gathering material for a NA
TIONAL GEOGRAPHIC article. Some of the Nepalese passes
on this route reach as high as 19,000 feet and are laden with
snow and ice.
Our seminar operated from Camp Muir. Here, five toilsome
hours from Paradise Valley, two low rock buildings squat in
the gap of a ridge between Nisqually and Cowlitz Glaciers.
Each day I studied the right-hand wall of the Nisqually
Glacier. Partly rock and partly ice, it soared perhaps a thou
sand feet, most of it seemingly straight up (pages 706-07). It
offered a tantalizing route to the summit, shorter but infi
nitely more dangerous than the routes normally followed. No
one had ever attempted it.
Ordinarily this icefall is constantly on the move, shower
ing the rest of the glacier with frightening avalanches. Vol
canic rock falls incessantly from outcrops on either side. But
just before we arrived at Camp Muir, a storm had sheathed
the rock and ice with snow. Since the storm, there had been
no avalanches or rock falls, for the temperatures had been
unusually low, hardening the protective snow cover.
Late one afternoon Lute looked at me and said, "I'm game
if you are."
"Let's try it," I replied.
The climb had to be at night, when colder temperatures
help keep the ice wall stable. Fortune favored us-a full
moon rose in a cloudless sky. We pulled on down-filled cloth
ing to stave off the penetrating cold, and donned plastic hard
hats to protect our heads from falling ice and rock. We wore
704